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Why feminists are friars’ new friends

A small act of mercy brought female protesters and Dominicans together during the Women’s March in Washington.

In a blog for Aleteia.org, Brother Martin Davis OP described how, once a few Dominican friars allowed a handful of protesters to use the friary bathrooms, a long queue with hundreds of people began to form. Brother Martin grew anxious as he noticed some of the protesters had pornographic and pro-abortion logos.

“Nevertheless,” he wrote, “those carrying or wearing these things had the courtesy to cover them up. The fervour that may have animated the large crowd did not go so deep as to make people oblivious or rude to flesh-and-blood humans.”

Brother Davis also found common ground with some of the protesters and was “able to engage in discussions about the Church’s teachings on the dignity of women, labourers and the poor”. In the end “a few marchers spontaneously started collecting money for the Church. It started with their passing around a hat. (I was told not to look at the text on the front, and I didn’t.) Over two hours, hundreds of dollars were donated to the Church without any prompting by the friars.”

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